Sermons from May 2018
What to look for in a spouse
The journey from ‘becoming friends’ to being married is an extremely important time of finding out about each other and testing the relationship. What you discover along the way (about your friend and about yourself!) can be quite confronting. But this is meant to be a time of personal spiritual growth as well as working out whether you’re ready for marriage. In this talk Pastor Murray deals head on with some of the practicalities of choosing a life partner. Whether you’re married, engaged, dating or looking forward to that prospect, there’s plenty of food for thought here about the type of spouse God wants all of us to be. (1 Thessalonians 4:1-8)
Pleasure and Greed – The Ultimate Lifestyle
The society we live in loves money and exalts greed. We seem to be getting richer and richer and yet are not satisfied. We each seem to love money differently – some for the pleasure we can get from spending it, some for the freedom it offers, some for the security it brings and some for the power and success it grants us. It seems that many Christians are not too different to the society we live in. Greed tells us many lies. Come to the Bible to find out what God really says about things like thankfulness, contentment, generosity and serving God when it comes to our money.
How does desire transform dating?
Desire shapes behaviour. What we want shapes what we do. This is true in all of life, and especially in relationships. Listen as we consider how right desires transform the way we go about relationships and dating.
The Sexual Revolution – relationships without boundaries?
For the past 50 years a sexual revolution has been taking place. We can blame the “pill” or many other factors, but the result has been the virtually complete disconnection of sex from marriage in modern western society. Today anything is OK. What started with some cheeky pushing of moral boundaries in movies and magazines has been turbocharged with the arrival of internet porn over the past 20 years. This “normalising” of sexual freedom presents a huge challenge to Christians,…
Cracks in the foundation: Does the family have a future?
Family is wonderful, but even at its best, family life is challenging. The family is spoken of as the foundation of our society, but now it seems to be under threat from our western culture. There seem to be cracks in the foundation. Come to the Bible to find the nature, purpose and value of family. We discover that the family does have a future as we delight in doing family well, for the glory of God.
Liberty from Legalism
The Sabbath controversy in Matthew 12 reminds us that Jesus gives us freedom from the chains of legalism. Instead of thinking we need to keep the law to appease a cranky God, we remember that we have been set free to joyfully obey our loving God.
Religious intolerance – are Christians still relevant?
With secular humanism steadily gaining ascendancy in Australia today, Christians are being told to keep their faith private. And if they don’t, they are accused of “imposing” their outdated views on modern society. How did this happen? What does this mean for the place of Christians and the church in an increasingly pagan society? And how should we respond in the face of this opposition? In this message Pastor Murray reminds us firstly, that we should not be surprised by…